Abstract:
Knowledge is preserved in the language of its producers and developers, and as a carrier of
culture, language is significant because it controls the way people (individually and
collectively) perceive themselves in relation to others in the world. Language is also primarily
responsible for initiating and sustaining creativity. Unfortunately, for European cultural
hegemony language also became a mechanism for launching strategies of domination and
alienation of the African personality and traditional knowledge. Ngugi wa Thiongo (1986)
and Prah (2009) have observed that as part of the plan the processes of subjugation and
domination did not only have to do with the colonised having to inherit alien syntax or
lexicology, but also the ways in which they ultimately perceive self and the world, and how to
relate with Europeans in their assumed superior status. Therefore, this article interrogates
the socio-politics of the dominant epistemology and how it has impacted African indigenous
languages and culture. It supports the case for the discourse regarding the decolonisation of
knowledge within the (South) African university. The article argues for the retrieval and repositioning
of African indigenous languages and culture as part of the decolonisation project
because the interface between indigenous knowledge and other knowledge systems is critical
in generating new insights.
